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Sat, 10 Dec 2016 02:19:08 +0100MYOBen-gbARM deal was all about the internet of thingshttp://fudzilla.com/news/processors/41160-arm-deal-was-all-about-the-internet-of-things
http://fudzilla.com/news/processors/41160-arm-deal-was-all-about-the-internet-of-things

But the rest of SoftBank’s logic is bizzare

Japan’s SoftBank surprise buy out of British chip designer ARM was all about getting its foot in the door into the internet of things.

SoftBank chairman and CEO Masayoshi Son said he wrote the $32 billion cheque because he was interested in the large business potential for the internet of things.

This surprised analysts because he failed to mention any other things that ARM could do for his outfit. If he was banking of the internet of things he might have a long time to wait before his investment pays off, but if had a short term plan it might have been worthwhile

Digitimes Research said that the deal had two main problems. ARM’s clientele differs from SoftBank's. Its clients are mobile IC design houses and mobile terminal devices.

SoftBank's business operations consist of mobile telecom and Internet services in the Japan (including Yahoo Japan) and the US (its subsidiary Sprint ).

ARM's business operation differs from SoftBank's because it makes money by flogging IP licenses and SoftBank is a provider of mobile telecom and Internet services. Basically this means that they are at the opposite ends of the supply chain.

It seems that Softbank is leaving ARM alone to carry out an independent operation after the acquisition, SoftBank is expected to hope that ARM can extend its global dominance from mobile terminal devices to IoT application.

After much messing around, Foxconn has finally agreed to buy Sharp at a 20 per cent discount.

Foxconn will buy 66 per cent control of financially struggling Sharp for $3.5 billion in the first takeover of a major Japanese electronics producer by a foreign company. However the agreement by Foxconn followed weeks of uncertainty over what Sharp had said was a deal at a higher price.

The price of $3.5 billion was a reduction of about 20 percent, from $4.4 billion which Sharp said in February that Foxconn had agreed to pay. The Taiwanese company said at the time it wasn't ready to sign a deal.

The companies gave no reason for the change but news reports suggested Foxconn was concerned about taking on additional liabilities it learned about late in the negotiations.

Asked what Foxconn's cunning plan to help Sharp recover from losses, Foxconn said that it would help the troubled outfit "upgrade its technology," but gave few other details.

Foxconn is Apple's key partner and Sharp makes Jobs' Mob's displays. Sharp was either going to be bought out by Foxconn or need another government bailout.

As we predicted on Monday, Western Digital has formally announced it is going to write a cheque for SanDisk for $19 billion

It is going to be a messy buy-out and there are a few things that could go wrong. The value of the transaction hinges on the closing of a $3.78 billion investment in the company by Unisplendour which is a unit of Chinese government’s state-backed Tsinghua Holdings. Unisplendour has promised to buy 15 percent of Western Digital for $3.78 billion.

That is all well and good, but the US government is incredibly paranoid about the Chinese government getting its hands on all that US technology which is already made behind the bamboo curtain.

Western Digital Chief Executive Steve Milligan said in an interview that the Sandisk acquisition will ultimately dilute Unisplendor's stake and that the regulators will overlook the Chinese investment.

"There's always a risk and you're not done until you're done, but we were careful and consulted with US. government experts," he said.

Western Digitalneeds access to SanDisk's NAND technology to compete in the SSD market. Western Digital said it had the support of SanDisk partner Toshiba which had some rights that could block a deal.

SanDisk has an intellectual property sharing joint venture with the Japanese company and uses its foundries to make chips.

It is almost certain that Western Digital will buy the memory-maker SanDisk and we are expecting an announcement later in the week.

Talks between the two are described as being in an “advanced stage” which is basically the point in a business negotiation where the two sides are arguing about who gets the top jobs in the new company.

Western Digital has apparently seen off rivals for SanDisk’s hand. Sandisk has a market capitalization of $14.6 billion so the deal will be extremely costly.

Negotiations are ongoing and a deal is not certain, and could win or fall on something silly like an executive losing his corporate carpark in the deal.

There has been much consolidation in the chip market as companies try to to consolidate suppliers. SanDisk will have to get permission from Toshiba as it uses Toshiba's foundries to make its chips and the two have an important intellectual property-sharing joint venture.Toshiba is likely to approve the deal because it would is more likely to accept Western Digital as a buyer for SanDisk than its sworn enemy Micron.

Western Digital has a market capital of about $22 billion will get $4-billion from China's state-backed Tsinghua Holdings if the deal passes regulatory scrutiny in the United States.

SanDisk, which is scheduled to report quarterly results on Wednesday, has grappled with tumbling flash memory prices.

Michael Dell is planning to write a $50 billion cheque to buy the data storage company EMC in what could be one of the biggest technology deals of the decade.

News of the deal has leaked to the press and is all the more surprising because the price tag that Dell's own company was only $24.9 billion last year.

Dell clearly has to borrow a dollar or two from his banker mates. He has been seen wearing his best shirt and tie with freshly polished shoes talking to one or two of them to get them interested in the deal.

Owning EMC would be good for Dell. It would give him access to more corporate clients which he needs if he is going to be a complete provider of enterprise computing services like HP and IBM.

EMC might have some good technology, but is suffering a bit as its activist investor and shareholder Elliott Management wants the company to spin off its majority-owned VMware unit.

The Dell deal has been on the boil for a while. In fact it was first rumoured in September 2014. Now it seems that the rumour has legs. However with this sort of money involved it will be one of the largest technology company buy-outs in ages and will certainly change a lot of the industry. To think, many people were writing Dell off three years ago.

The idea has been floating around Asustek Chairman Johnny Shih's brain for a while and has been gaining momentum now that HTC's share price tanked this week.

HTC shares plunged 20 percent on Monday and Tuesday combined after the company forecast a steep loss for the June quarter which made it a more tempting take-over target.Chief Financial Officer David Chang has confirmed Shih has chatted about the topic internally.

"Still, the chances of an actual takeover are not big as Asustek is a company that has depended on organic growth."

In otherwords it does not really like the idea of fast tracking its growth by buying companies which are not doing that well but are sitting on a ton of IP.

They said it could not happen, it nearly didn't, but we have it on good authority that Intel is going to announce that it is buying Altera for $17 billion today.

Altera and Intel have been having on again off again negotiations for about a year with the sticking point apparently being the price.

However there seems to be an ongoing wave of industry consolidation which Intel and Alteria needs to surf or be eating by the great white shark of competition.

On Sunday, The Wall Street Journal reported that "people familiar with the matter" said Altera shareholders would receive about $54 per share, similar to the offer the San Jose, California, company recently rejected. The paper noted the deal could still collapse but our source has suggested otherwise.

If the deal it will be the biggest buy out in Intel's 47-year history, so big in fact that many insisted it would never happen.

Intel, based in Santa Clara, California, is the world's largest maker of PC chips and sells most of the chips used in servers, a much more profitable product. It already partners with Altera, manufacturing some top-end chips designed by the much-smaller company, while Altera has used some of Intel's technology in the design of its chips under a long-term agreement reached in 2013.

Altera is attractive because it makes chips used in phone networks and cars. Intel has been looking to get into those areas as demand for personal computer chips slips due to the downturn in the sales of desktop and laptop computers as more people rely on smartphones and tablets to connect to the Internet.

Altera also sells chips known as field-programmable gate arrays that customers can later configure for specific processing or data-storage functions, including for use in cellular base stations and switching systems.

The deal is part of Nokia's cunning plan to become a major provider of networking equipment that competes with market leader Ericsson.

The Nokia and Alcatel-Lucent deal is expected to close the deal in the first half of 2016 and it will have to face the hurdle of the French who are not keen on losing any jobs as a result of the deal.

It is expected that the French will seek guarantees that Nokia will not fire any one, or force anyone to eat Finnish food, like Whale Blubber or Reindeer on French soil. Of course could also surrender completely.

In a statement Nokia said that the combined company will be uniquely positioned to create the foundation of seamless connectivity for people and things wherever they are.

Nokia said this foundation was essential for enabling the next wave of technological change, including the Internet of Things and transition to the cloud.

With more than 40,000 R&D employees and spend of €4.7 billion in R&D in 2014, the combined company will be in a position to accelerate development of future technologies including 5G, IP and software-defined networking, cloud, analytics as well as sensors and imaging."